


See you on the other side

by Gobetti



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Assisted Suicide, Depression, God Tier, M/M, Sadstuck, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-17
Updated: 2012-05-17
Packaged: 2017-11-05 13:07:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/406693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gobetti/pseuds/Gobetti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dirk is about to face his own death over his questbed for the sake of the game.<br/>But even though he knows he won't really die, killing himself isn't as easy as it should be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	See you on the other side

UU: yoU’d do it, dirk? that easily?

TT: I don’t see why not. I mean, it’s not like I haven’t given the idea some thought.

UU: ...

TT: What?

UU: oh, dirk.

TT: Come on, you can’t say you’re surprised.

TT: Living all alone, stranded inside an empty apartment in a world that is doomed do succumb any day now...

TT: Can’t blame a guy for having some morbid thoughts.

UU: if that is so, then i have to ask.

UU: what made yoU change yoUr mind?

UU: what made yoU not go throUgh with it?

TT: A plethora of reasons, really.

TT: I’d spend all day long listing them, and even though I’d love to tell you what made me not cut my wrists open or break my neck or jump head first off the top of my building towards the deep, endless sea below,

TT: We really just don’t have the time.

Dirk closed his eyes, blocking his view from the pesterchum in his shades.

He knew exactly what made him refrain from planting a dagger onto his own chest and watch himself bleed to death. They were actually simple reasons; small pros that barely overpowered the cons of staying alive.

First there was the fear of death. He couldn’t bare thinking about watching his blood run down his shirt, arms, hands, neck, warm and red and vivid and very much real. Or the feeling of the cold and heavy water filling his lungs, the desperate sensation of suffocating, of trying to drawn in much needed air when you’re surrounded by only salty, endless sea.

Then there was the fear of dying alone, which, to Dirk, was much, much worse than dying with someone by your side.

And then, there was...

There was everything else.

Despite being alone, Dirk knew he wasn’t completely abandoned. Not really.

He knew there were people out there, even if only in some distant and faraway place, that cared deeply about him. People that believed in Dirk. Even though they weren’t physically beside him he could feel their presences. They were real. And the last thing he’d ever want to do was to let them down by doing something so selfish as taking away his own life. Giving up when there was still hope.

Ever since he was little, Dirk remembers a tall, lean and cold bot that took him in after his meteor crashed on – thankfully – dry land and settled him in the old, dusty apartment. He remembers being fed by it, cradled, put to sleep. He also remembers never seeing said bot again save for once or twice a year after his seventh birthday.

Dirk never knew the bliss of a dreamless sleep. Every time he closed his eyes he found himself inside a purple room, surrounded by purple walls, wearing purple pajamas. He remembers being able to fly, remembers looking out the window and seeing a city filled with weird looking black skinned people, and he remembers feeling utterly scared and alone despite how light and peaceful he always felt inside that odd looking room.

He remembers never leaving the tower, too scared of flying-slash-floating out the window, afraid that he’d fall and hit the asphalt and taint the purple of his magic dream city with crimson red. He’d always spend the hours his real body slept soundly on Earth curled up in the corner of his bed,  back leaning against the cold wall, clutching Lil’ Cal flush to his chest and murmuring to him. And whenever he fell asleep like that he never had calm dreams; he’d always see people he didn’t know, aliens he never met and gods that controlled the wind and bended time and defied the laws of physics and predicted the future.

He’d also dream of a tall, muscular men, with blonde hair exactly like his own, wielding a sword in one hand and sporting a wide grin on his face, hugging him and talking to him and soothing him though his ever restless sleep.

And even though they were indeed restless, he always mysteriously woke up very well rested on the safety of his bedroom, the smell of salt and the warm humidity making him shiver and wish he could go back to the cool temperature of his dreamland.

One day Dirk finally decided to face his fears; he ventured outside his dream tower, carefully propelling himself towards the sky with a soft push onto the windowsill. Once finally on land and outside the tower, Dirk encountered a female carpace. She widened her eyes, fidgeted, even whimperd a little, until she finally gathered enough courage to approach the young human boy. Until this day Dirk realizes how damn lucky he was to find an ally instead of a foe, and how fortunate he was that the carpace never told anyone about him.

She took the young prince into her home, fed him, made him warm and comfortable, taught him survival tips, kept the young infant updated on what was happening on Earth, on Derse and on Prospit. She was the one who told him in details about the Condesce and how she had killed their queen, how she wiped the human race off the planet’s existence and how she planned on finishing the job by wiping him out as well as soon as she had the opportunity. Dirk listened carefully and warily, overwhelmed with how much was going on without he even noticed, while he was comfortable and oblivious inside his own little worlds.

He began exploring the underwater ruins not long after he had full knowledge of the truth, searching and watching for dead things and relics well preserved beneath a thick layer of salt and kelp. He fished his own food, forged his own sword, harvested the scrap metal needed to build his very own robots. At day, he studied and trained and became stronger to make the lady carpace proud of the boy she was protecting and hiding and nurturing beneath her motherly wing; at night, he talked and laughed and enjoyed the only company he could call his own, the only alive and rational contact he had, his sane line to life.

When he was eleven, UU and uu contacted him for the first time. Dirk thought it was fascinating to have a real troll talking to him, interacting with him, albeit through letters behind a screen. They were the ones who provided him Roxy’s chumhandle, and the mere thought that there was someone else struggling as hard as he was somewhere else in the planet lit up that tiny, warm spark of hope in his chest. He almost dared to try his luck and swim all the way to where New York was once upon a time, just to see her. He knew that doing it would be his demise, and that’s the very only reason why he didn’t go through with it.

A week after that, Dirk fell asleep, waking up in Derse as usual, and from the brim of his window he saw it.

The female carpace’s house, along with dozen others along it, burning to the ground.

Dirk cried for the first time in five years that night, mourning the loss of his only friend and family. He saw in the papers that said houses were destroyed because the carpaces living within were accused of being against the empress. He knew that she was bright; she probably saw the attack coming long before the agents arrived. Dirk prayed that she had managed to escape before her house was set on fire, and that she was somehow able to find comfortable shelter and survive. Dirk knew he couldn’t go after her, go looking for her, risking being seen, not after all she did to hide him at all costs. So he prayed. And he hoped. And he kept working hard to make her proud, wherever she was.

UU introduced him to Jake, and uu introduced him to Jane, both at that same day. They all hit it off rather quickly, and the following months after that were blissful heaven. Dirk, Jane, Roxy and Jake talked all day long almost every day, and while Dirk felt extremely loved, he had never felt so utterly alone.

When he was twelve Dirk completed Squarewave, and the intelligent bot managed to fill some of the void in his life. At that same year he began building the brobot, his own personal and elaborate present for Jake. When he was thirteen, he concluded brobot and he finished programming the auto responder; the intelligent clone program also helped the prince to feel less alone than he really felt. It was around then, reading Jake’s interactions with the artificial intelligence, that he realized how bad he had for him. It finally hit Dirk that he had, through the course of the years, developed deep and non-ironic feelings for his best friend, his best _male_ friend, who was always cheerful and oblivious and supportive and just god damn _perfect_.

He talked about it to Lil’ Cal night in and night out, falling asleep with the puppet flush against his chest in a tight embrace.

Now, at sixteen, sitting over a stone slab, Dirk remembers everything. People were right when they say that you see your entire life before your eyes just before you die. It didn’t make doing what he was about to do any easier; in fact, it just made it harder. Maybe that’s why most people can never go on with it.

Footsteps snapped him out of his gloomy thoughts, and the dark haired boy approached the blond, frightened figure.

“Took you long enough.” Dirk muttered, staring at his own shoes. The iron grip he held to the edge of the rough stone made his knuckles white and his veins jut out.

“Sorry, lad.” Jake whispered back to him, chucking lowly. It was much more of a sad sound than a cheerful one, and it made Dirk shiver. “I... I was just... trying to find my way.”

“Right.” The prince mumbled, trying to ignore the double meaning behind Jake’s words. He scooted back and lay down over the stone, crossing both hands over his stomach and looking up onto the endless dark sky. His breathing was accelerated, his heartbeat going a thousand miles a minute. He was pretty sure he was shaking like a leaf.

“Right.” Jake echoed, stepping closer to Dirk’s quest bed. The hands holding the twin Berettas shook violently with nervousness, with fright, with desperation. “Is, is this the only way to do it?” he asked, filled with uncertainty.

“I trust you, Jake.” Dirk said, closing his eyes, feeling a few stubborn tears roll down the side of his face. If Jake noticed, he didn’t say it. “You’re the only one I trust to do this. You know I couldn’t do it on my own. I _need_ you to do this. It’s the only way we’ll ever stand a chance. The only way we’ll ever make a difference.”

“I know all that, chap, I know, it’s just...” and he stopped, biting his lip as he looked intensively at the body before him. “I-I am not completely sure if I can—“

“Jake.”

And Dirk opened his eyes to finally take off his shades, setting them right next to him over the cold bed. He turned his watery eyes to look at Jake, who was outright bawling his eyes out, brows turned upright, mouth half open, jaw and lower lip trembling violently. He was shaking all over, the grip to the pistols as slack as it could get, though his fingers still hovered over the triggers.

Thick, warm tears ran down from his emerald green eyes as he looked at Dirk and felt with all the certainty in his heart that he just couldn’t do it.

“...I love you.” Dirk whispered, and Jake’s heart ached, as if his ribcage clenched shut over the pumping organ. He whimpered out loud, hiccupping loudly, biting his lower lip with his bucktooth in a futile attempt to make it stop quivering. The page squeezed his eyes shut, making even more tears sprout out from behind his puffy eyelids.

“I trust you.”

Jake shook his head rapidly, desperately, messing his wild hair even more. He used the back of his hand and the cuff of his sleeve to wipe his runny nose.

“I know, bro, I know.” He muttered, walking closer to the quest bed and bringing both hands to his head, gripping at his hair. “Dirk, Dirk, oh, Dirk... don’t make me do this, don’t, please, Dirk...”

“If you do this,” he assured his friend, and the calm, even tone that he spoke made the tanned boy slowly open his eyes. The fresh tears dampening Dirk’s blond locks betrayed his overall calmness. “I assure you that I will see you again in ten minutes tops. Okay?” he reached out with his palm up, and Jake let go of his hair, allowing the prince to wrap his callused fingers around his left wrist. Dirk could feel the pulse beneath the warm skin even without applying much pressure. “This is not a goodbye, Jake. It’s just a see you in a bit.” And even though they both knew that it didn’t make what was about to happen any easier. “I promise.”

Jake nodded, closing his eyes again.

“You’re giving me your word, Dirk! You’re fucking promising! And now I will make you see through your promise no matter what it takes. I will not leave this mountain, this bedside, no matter what happens, at least not until I see your skinny ass floating across that stupid psychedelic portal. You hear me, you damn fool?!”

Dirk grinned, chuckling under his breath.

“As clear as day, Jake.”

“G-good.” He stuttered, opening his eyes and wiping his nose again. He raised his hands and removed the security lock from both weapons. Dirk sighed shakily, turning his head to the sky and closing his eyes again. “You ready?” he heard Jake whisper, and the prince nodded once.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

And before he could do or say anything, he could see a dark shadow behind his closed eyelids, and when he opened his eyes, he felt Jake’s cold lips pressing against his own, warm tears dripping down over his face. It was only a fraction of a second of shock before Dirk pressed up into the touch, heart beating even faster, leaning closer towards Jake, sighing through his nose and hiccupping, cursing himself for sounding and looking so pathetic and little and feeble... but it was just he and Jake. He knew it was alright to be weak once in a while, if Jake was the only witness.

He knew he could let his guard down around Jake, and that the page would never judge him for it.

Only one of the many reasons why Dirk loves him.

Jake pulled back and both boys opened their eyes, staring at each other intensively, the page’s green emeralds scanning Dirk’s face frantically, memorizing every scratch, every freckle, every tiny little scar only barely visible over his white pale skin.

“Now I am too.” He finally said, voice shaky and weak, pulling back and rising to his feet. Two heavy metal barrels were aimed at Dirk’s head.

“See you on the other side?” Dirk asked, smiling at Jake, his trembling lips betraying his cool and aloof façade. His clenched fists drew blood from his palm, but he couldn’t care less.

Jake smiled back, a wobbly and untrue smile, trying, with no avail, to somehow steady his grip to his favorite guns.

The boy nodded once more, sniffing and clenching his fists over his trusty pistols.

“...I’ll see you there, mate.”


End file.
